


How to Say 'I Love You': A Guide by Derek Malik Nurse

by nightswatch



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Established Relationship, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 04:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9055843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightswatch/pseuds/nightswatch
Summary: Five times Nursey doesn't say 'I love you' (at least not out loud) and one time he does.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an anon prompt I got a billion years ago. (I'm sorry it took so long.)

**1.**

Nursey wakes up with Dex wiggling about next to him, turning over and curling against Nursey’s side with a quiet sigh. It has something content about it, something soft, and even without opening his eyes, Nursey knows how relaxed Dex looks right now, mouth slack, no frown in sight.

He pries an eye open to take a peek.

It’s still early and the morning light doesn’t even deserve to be called _light_ just yet. It’s all gray, barely there, a mere hint of dawn, so the attic is still doused in shadows. It’s entirely too early to even be awake, but it’s pretty much unavoidable that they’ll wake each other up during the night when Dex doesn’t make it to the top bunk.

In all honesty, Dex hasn’t made it up to the top bunk in at least two weeks.

Nursey’s suggested that they could just, y’know, put the bunkbed in the basement until they graduate and get a _real_ bed, but they’d probably have to sacrifice one desk and a drawer to fit a queen size bed into the attic. So, on most nights, they squeeze into the bottom bunk and Nursey falls asleep with Dex’s head pillowed on his chest and wakes up with their limbs tangled. And he also wakes up in between when Dex snores into his ear or stabs him in the ribs with his elbow or when he nearly falls out of bed.

It’s worth it, though. Even Dex, who grumbles a lot in the morning when Nursey’s started mumbling in his sleep again or when he’s pushed Dex against the wall during the night, will grudgingly admit that it’s not so bad. Still less than ideal, but at least they got dibs.

They nearly murder each other at least once a week, but they’re both still alive, so they’re making it work. Somehow. They’ve gotten pretty good at shutting each other up. They’re also getting a little bit better at having actual conversations.

Yeah, no one is more shocked than Nursey, seriously.

Anyway, Nursey tends to forget about all the bickering in moments like this one. _Dex_ and _peaceful_ don’t really go hand in hand unless it’s early morning and Dex is fast asleep and nestled against Nursey and they’re not pushing each other out of bed and there’s no snoring and no grumbling.

Right now, Nursey can see nothing but the top of Dex’s head and the hand that’s curled into Nursey’s shirt, sticking out from under the covers.

He loves quiet little moments like this one. Nursey doesn’t even mind that he’s awake this early on a Sunday, because he knows that neither of them has anywhere to be, so they can stay in bed, and he can go back to sleep, and they can wake up later on, together. They can trade a few slow, barely-awake kisses and Nursey can let his hands roam and can run his fingers through Dex’s hair, can let them wander down his spine, can feel the warmth of Dex’s skin under his fingertips.

But that’s all for later.

Nursey’s arm is pretty much numb at this point but he doesn’t have the heart to pry it out from under Dex. He’s so not going to wake him up. He’s having a bit of a moment.

Because this… this could be it. It’s probably too early to even think about it, but Nursey can see himself with Dex in ten years. In twenty years. In all the years that come in between and all the years that come after. He can see it. He can see them bickering about the same things they bicker about now, and about new things, too, he can see himself waking up next to Dex in a bed much bigger than this one, he can see Dex muttering angrily at his computer while he sits next to him and reads, and there’s snow settling on the windowsill and Nursey is wearing one of Dex’s old Samwell hoodies and turns to him and presses a kiss to his cheek and says–

 _Whoa_.

Nursey blinks down at the top of Dex’s head. He’s not a stranger to his brain throwing shit like that at him. Honestly, Nursey likes going to some undefined point in their future, likes the thought that they’ll make it there despite of… well, despite of everything that will undoubtedly happen in between.

Dex shifts against him, sniffles, and then presses an ice-cold foot against Nursey’s. That one definitely just came in from outside the duvet.

“Hm,” Dex says.

Nursey’s fingers twitch against Dex’s back. It’s either that or jumping out of bed screaming because Dex’s foot is an actual fucking ice cube. Nursey hisses and pulls his foot out of the way.

All he gets in return is another _hm_ from Dex, although that one sounds like it has at least five question marks attached to it.

“Shh,” Nursey says. “Go back to sleep.”

“Why’re you ‘wake?” Dex asks.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” Dex says. He pulls his hand under the covers as well, but it stays curled against Nursey’s chest.

“Go back to sleep, babe,” Nursey whispers.

Dex wiggles a little, tilts his head and kisses Nursey’s neck. “You go back to sleep.”

Nursey only hums Dex and slowly runs his fingers through his hair. It’s grown out a bit during the last few weeks, because Dex is working too much and hasn’t stopped being stressed since, like, the beginning of October. Bitty isn’t doing any better. Nursey doesn’t go into the kitchen anymore unless it’s empty or unless he absolutely has to.

Slowly, Dex’s breathing evens out. Nursey can still feel his lips on his skin, wants to feel them again and again, every morning, every day.

Nursey isn’t sure how it’s not killing him how much he loves Dex. Maybe it’s killing him a little. Maybe love is too big of a word, but it seems exactly right. It’s what he feels when he looks at Dex, it’s what he feels when Dex kisses him, it’s what he feels when he wakes up next to him.

He could say it.

He could say it right now, could whisper a quiet _I love you_ , and this gray morning would swallow it right up. Dex wouldn’t even hear. Nursey could say it, because he wants to, because it’s true.

He doesn’t say it.

Nursey doesn’t know how. He’s never said it to anyone who wasn’t family. It feels like _more_ when it’s Dex. It feels bigger. And he wants Dex to hear it. Just. Not yet. Because he still has to figure out how to actually say it out loud.

For now he just thinks it. _I love you_.

Nursey likes the sound of it, even if it’s just in his thoughts.

 

**2.**

Nursey has always enjoyed looking at Dex a lot more than anyone should enjoy looking at someone who’s _just a friend_. They’re not _just friends_ now, which is fantastic, because Nursey still hasn’t grown tired of looking at Dex. He won’t. Ever.

He tries to memorize the way Dex’s freckles dot his skin, but they might as well look different every single day. It just gives Nursey all the more reason to look.

More often than not Dex catches him staring and then he’ll frown and go back to his work or he’ll roll his eyes or, and that’s Nursey’s favorite thing, he’ll smile, like he knows exactly how much Nursey loves looking at him. Like he _likes_ it.

Nursey has gone from secret musings about the curve of Dex’s lips to outright staring at his ass. He’s not even trying to keep his eyes from roaming anymore. He doesn’t have to, even if there’s a good chance that Dex will chirp him or grumble at him, because there’s still that very slim chance that Nursey will catch Dex off guard and that he’ll smile.

Today Dex only looks up from his laptop and says, “Do I have something on my face?”

Nursey puts down the textbook he’s been ignoring for the past fifteen minutes in favor of watching Dex’s fingers fly over his keyboard. Before he got distracted by Dex chewing on his bottom lip. And his sighing. And, like, his own thoughts. Because. Nursey. Just. Loves him.

“Nursey, what the fuck?”

_I love you._

“Nothing,” Nursey says.

“Yeah? Nothing on my face?”

Nursey gets up from his bed, not banging his head against the top bunk for once, and takes two steps over to Dex. “Let me check.”

“Nurse.”

“What?”

“I’m trying to work.”

“You asked if there was something on your face,” Nursey says and leans in close to plant a kiss on Dex’s cheekbone. “I’m just checking.”

“Well, now there is definitely something on my face.”

“You like it,” Nursey whispers and climbs into Dex’s lap, a little clumsily.

Dex’s arms wrap around him to keep him from falling off again on the other side. When Nursey is in Dex’s lap, Dex has to look up at him a little, and right now he’s trying very, very hard to be annoyed, but there’s something else there in his eyes that Nursey is all too familiar with.

“Wanna take a nap with me?” Nursey asks.

“Nine in the evening isn’t that great of a time for a nap.”

“Wanna come over there with me…” Nursey kisses Dex on the lips, nips at his jaw and bends down to whisper against his neck, “and _not_ take a nap?”

Dex sighs softly. He’ll finish that homework no matter what Nursey tries; he’s already tried a lot. And Dex’s resolve hardly ever crumbles. Anyway, Nursey knows how important it is to Dex to do well in that class. So he’ll back off. With great unwillingness, but still. It was just too tempting to steal a quick kiss. Or a not-so-quick kiss.

“I should have known that I’d never get anything done when I moved in here with you,” Dex says.

“Yo, Dex, you can do me any time you want,” Nursey says.

“Okay, that’s it…” Dex shoves at him. “Get off.”

Nursey laughs, gives Dex another kiss and then clambers off him. “I’ll be waiting over there.”

Instead of doing his own reading – that’s something for tomorrow’s Nursey to worry about – he curls up in bed and looks at Dex while Dex looks at his computer screen.

Nursey wants to say it so much. He just wants to throw an _I love you_ out there because he wants Dex to know. Now, here come the _but_ s. But maybe it’s too early. But maybe Dex doesn’t feel the same way. But maybe Dex won’t say it back because he’s not ready to. And that’s not actually an issue, like, Nursey would understand, but– He can’t say it yet. If he’s really, really honest for a second, Nursey will admit that it has very little to do with how Dex is going to react.

Nursey has no idea why it’s so hard for him to say anyway. Sure, it’s a big deal, but he’s actually sure about this. He _knows_ how he feels. Maybe some part of him is secretly waiting for the day that he realizes that all of this wasn’t real. And saying _I love you_ would definitely make it one hundred percent real for him. And then finding out that it wasn’t real for Dex would hurt a billion times more.

Maybe it’s that. Nursey knows it’s irrational, because, well, of course it’s real. His mind just hasn’t got the memo yet.

Whatever.

Dex is scribbling something down on a post-it note and then sticks it to the wall, where it joins a complicated network of post-it notes that may or may not be color-coded. Nursey would lie if he said that he understands Dex’s system.

After another five minutes spent staring at his laptop screen, Dex leans back in his chair. Almost done, then. He leans forward again, frowns, tilts his head, nods to himself, and closes his laptop.

Nursey is already smirking at Dex before he’s even turned around to face him.

Dex groans quietly as he gets up and stretches and Nursey is really only a little disappointed when Dex’s shirt does a really bad job of riding up. Doesn’t matter. He’ll get that shirt out of the way soon enough. “I’m getting pie, do you want some?” Dex asks.

Nursey shakes his head. “I’m good.”

“Okay,” Dex says, and bends down to give Nursey a sloppy kiss before he heads downstairs.

Nursey stares at Dex’s desk in the meantime. His eyes wander over the stack of textbooks, and Dex’s laptop with all those stickers, and his pens, his notebook, and that sea of post-it notes, and–

He gets up slowly, and stares at the notes, orange and green and yellow and pink. There’s their practice schedule scribbled on one of them, and _call Mom on Monday, 8pm_ , and hand-in dates for homework on others, _meet Nursey at Annie’s on Tuesday after class_ , and a little stick figure drawing of Dex playing hockey that Chowder left for him.

Nursey’s going to leave something as well.

He doesn’t have to _say_ it, right? He can work up to it.

He takes the green post-its and scribbles _love you_ on the one on top. It’s ridiculous and he _feels_ ridiculous and he really should be able to just say it out loud, but… This is easier. And maybe Nursey is a coward for picking the easy way, but he likes how that little post-it note looks between all the others when he sticks it to the wall.

Nursey does think about taking it down again for like a second. Then he hears Dex’s footsteps on the stairs and he quickly scrambles back into bed.

Nothing really changes the next day. Or the day after that.

Dex isn’t different around him, doesn’t say a word about it, and Nursey thinks that maybe Dex hasn’t seen it, until, a couple of days later, Nursey opens his notebook and there’s an orange post-it note stuck to the first page.

_love you too._

 

**3.**

It takes Nursey a while to find the right book.

He spends a lot of time in the bookstore on campus, in the secondhand section, because he’s not going to use a brand new book for what he’s planning on doing. Dex would cold-bloodedly murder him for being so _extra_. So Nursey buys a stack of old books and sifts through them while Dex is at class. When he’s done for the day, he shoves them under the bed.

One time, Dex catches him at it.

Nursey has his headphones on and doesn’t hear Dex coming up the stairs and then suddenly he’s standing in the middle of the room, eyebrows raised, casually scaring the living hell out of Nursey. Because Dex is supposed to be _in class_. Which probably got cancelled. Great.

Nursey hits pause and pulls off his headphones.

“What are you reading?” Dex asks. He doesn’t say hello. They argued this morning and after they’ve argued all their conversations are all over the place, like they have to find their back into being normal around each other again. Dex will probably say hello two minutes from now.  

“Just a thing,” Nursey says.

“Huh,” Dex says and drops his bag. “A thing for class?”

“Nah, just a… thing,” Nursey says and shoves the book under his pillow before Dex can think about asking questions about why Nursey is reading some old Victorian novel with yellowed pages. He’s not even really reading it. He’s just scanning the pages. Looking for the right words.

Dex kicks off his shoes and crawls into bed with him. “Okay?”

“Chyeah,” Nursey says and pulls Dex down against his chest.

“Class got cancelled.”

“I figured.”

Dex huffs, but there’s nothing angry about it. It’s soft, maybe a little exhausted. Happy to be home.

It’s not morning anymore. As often as they fight, they’re also pretty quick to reconcile. Sometimes Nursey thinks that Dex only yells because he doesn’t know any other way of getting it out. They yell, and then it’s out there, and then they can move on with their lives.

Dex nuzzles into Nursey’s sweater. “Hey,” he says. There it is.

“Hey,” Nursey mumbles into Dex’s hair. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just tired.”

“Take a nap,” Nursey says. Dex deserves a fucking nap. He’s been working on some group project from hell with Chowder all week. Nursey fell asleep before Dex even crawled into bed with him on most days. Sometimes Dex even climbed up to the top bunk. At least he got more sleep up there than he would have squeezed into bed with Nursey, but that doesn’t mean that Nursey didn’t hate waking up alone.

Today Dex doesn’t grumble about having work to do, he just admits defeat and slumps against Nursey.

“Dex…”

“Yeah?”

 _I love you_.

Nursey clears his throat. “Sorry ‘bout earlier.” It was sort of his fault. Riling Dex up isn’t as much fun as it used to be in freshman year, but sometimes he just can’t stop himself. If Dex gets snappy, Nursey will be right there with him half a second later. He should probably work on that.

“S’okay,” Dex says and wraps his arms tightly around Nursey.

It helps to know that after they’ve fought, they’ll always go back to this. To tangled limbs and soft sighs and a silence that neither of them wants to break.

Dex falls asleep, warm against Nursey’s side, fingers curled loosely into his shirt. It’s a weird thought, but Nursey could stay like this until the end of time if he had to. If he could have this forever, he’d want it, he’d take it, no questions asked. There was a time when the thought of being with someone for more than five minutes had him running the other way, but with Dex, well, it doesn’t seem so impossible with him.

When he’s sure that Dex is asleep, Nursey pulls his book out from under his pillow and starts leafing through it again.

That is, in the end, how he finds it, and now that he thinks about it, maybe it was the only way for him to find it. With Dex curled against him, with the words he was looking for in all those books right there on the tip of his tongue.

Nursey carefully rips the page out of the book, picks up a sharpie and starts blacking out words until only three of them are left, one all the way up in the right-hand corner, the other one a few lines down, the last one nearly at the bottom of the page. _I_ and _love_ and _you_.

He leaves it in Dex’s desk drawer the next morning.

For a long while, Nursey doesn’t know what happened to it after that. Not until he comes across it again a couple of months later, folded up, tucked into Dex’s wallet.

 

**4.**

“You really don’t have to do this,” Dex says.

“I know.”

“I could–”

“Dex,” Nursey says and points at Dex with the big spoon, yes, the big spoon that all the big kids get to use when they’re cooking in Bitty’s kitchen.

It’s making Dex nervous that he is wielding the big spoon, Nursey can tell. It makes Nursey a little nervous, too. He’ll be the first one to admit that he isn’t much of a cook and there’s a good chance that he’ll manage to burn down the Haus somehow if he’s not careful. So far, Nursey has done very well watching the proceedings in the kitchen and staying out of any cooking and baking that may have occurred.

But now Bitty is still at the library and Chowder is out on a date with Farmer and Tango is– Actually, Nursey has no idea where he is, the point is, he was the only one around when Dex came back from class, his face red, a frown etched into his features.

After being around Dex for, like, two and a half years, Nursey knows what he looks like when he’s headed for breaking point. He knows Dex and his moods and he saw so very clearly that Dex was about two seconds away from snapping. In moments like that, Dex needs to be handled with care. Nursey understands that now. He’s learned.

So he abandoned his textbooks on the kitchen table and went to pull Dex into the kitchen with him and said, “Hey, you hungry?”

Dex shrugged.

“I’ll find us something to eat.”

“Nursey–”

“No, it’s fine, I’ll make…”

Canned soup.

He’s making canned soup. It’s not that hard. He found it in a cupboard and he doesn’t even know how long it’s been in there, but hey, it something to eat. He would have taken Dex out for dinner if he’d thought that he was up for it, but Dex doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to go _anywhere_.

Nursey stirs the soup for a bit and tries to keep himself from sneaking glances at Dex every other second. He gets two bowls. _Then_ he sneaks a glance at him. The frown is mostly gone, but Dex is slowly tearing a napkin to shreds, so Nursey wouldn’t go as far as saying that Dex is over whatever upset him in the first place. Nursey has to tread carefully here, because when Dex is already pissed off, they’re definitely one wrong step away from a fight.

“Bad day?” Nursey asks.

Dex only grunts in reply. Which means he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Nursey can work around that. “You know, there’s still a leftover slice of pie if you–”

“That’s your pie,” Dex mutters.

“Babe,” Nursey says and puts down the big spoon. He sidles over to Dex. “I wouldn’t mind sharing my pie.” He slowly cards his fingers through Dex’s hair and Dex’s head tips towards him ever so slightly. Maybe Nursey should go for less talking and more of this.

He traces the line of Dex’s jaw and nudges his chin before he leans down to give him a kiss. And another one. And then another one that drags on, that has Dex’s teeth scraping at Nursey’s bottom lip, that leaves them with their breaths coming quickly and with very little will to pull apart.

Nursey is definitely not above climbing into his boyfriend’s lap in the middle of the kitchen for everyone who might walk in through the door to see. He’ll pay all the fines in the world. They’ll never be as bad as Jack and Bitty anyway.

He whines when Dex pulls away. “Soup,” Dex says.

“Right, soup” Nursey says and stumbles over to the stove. The soup is on a good way to bubbling over and if he thought that telling the soup to chill would do any good, he’d give it a try, but– “Uh…”

He can hear Dex sigh, then Dex himself appears and pulls the pot off the stove. “There.”

“Dude, that was smooth.”

“You’re never cooking again,” Dex says.

Hey, at least nothing’s on fire, so Nursey would say that things are going pretty well for him, all things considered. He shoves Dex back towards the table.

When Nursey sets down a bowl of soup in front of Dex a moment later, it actually earns him a small smile. It’s barely there, but it’s much better than all that frowning. He sits down next to Dex, gives his thigh a squeeze under the table and then leaves his hand right there when Dex’s fingers settle on top of his.

They don’t talk much and Nursey forgoes eating entirely in favor of pushing letters up towards the rim of his bowl. The soup is still too hot to eat anyway.

Dex is pushing around letters, too. Wherever Dex’s mind has gone, he’s clearly stuck there right now. Nursey knows what that feels like. Sometimes he just thinks too much, gets lost somewhere, and he’s glad when Dex is around to shake him out of it.

“Psst. Hey, Dex…”

Dex looks up, eyebrows raised. “What?”

Nursey turns his bowl around to show Dex what he’s written. He’s fished an _I love you_ out of his soup, and it’s all horribly lopsided and Nursey is pretty sure that the u is actually a dilapidated o, but it gets the message across just fine.

He watches Dex as he reads it, watches the blush creep onto his cheek, watches that tiny smile reappear.

“You’re such a fucking nerd,” Dex says.

Nursey can actually hear the _I love you, too_ between those words. Before Nursey can reply, Dex has already caught him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him into a kiss.

 

**5.**

It’s April and an eerie silence has descended over the Haus. You’ll still hear Bitty clatter about the kitchen, but even the clattering sounds sad.

Nursey is curled up in bed with one of his notebooks, jotting down ideas for his final creative writing assignment. He has a total of one and a half ideas and neither the whole one nor the half one is any good. He’s not sure why he thought that creative writing would be a good idea in the first place. Granted, he’s not bad at it. Actually, he’s pretty damn good. But he only is when he actually has something to write about. Which is definitely not the case right now.

There are no words for how glad he is when Dex comes in through the door. Nursey could use a distraction.

“Dex,” Nursey says, “babe, my favest, come ‘ere.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“No…” Nursey winks at Dex. “But I’d feel a lot better if you came over here.”

Dex considers him for a moment, licks his lips, then he turns around. “I have to take care of the back door first,” Dex says and pulls his toolbox out from under his desk. “It’s still kinda jammed and Tango nearly took himself out with it yesterday.”

“Just put a sign on it.”

“Like that one time when I put a sign on the toaster and you nearly electrocuted yourself?”

“That sign was mad small, man.”

“Do your homework, Nursey,” Dex says, a smile tugging at his lips. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Hmm, or I could come downstairs and hand you like… a hammer or whatever. Like,  you could tell me what you need and I’d hand it to you like a–”

“Don’t.”

Nursey smiles brightly. “– _nurse_.”

“I’m breaking up with you.”

“Rude.”

Dex leaves without another comment, but Nursey doesn’t miss that Dex shoots him one last glance before he walks out the door.

Nursey taps his pen against the page for about fifteen minutes until he has something that at least vaguely resembles another idea. He’s still scribbling when Bitty starts blasting Beyoncé. Nursey barely hears it.

When Dex comes back to their room, Nursey doesn’t even notice until Dex sets down his toolbox and he nearly jumps out of his skin. “Yo, what the–”

“Writing’s going well, then?”

“Yeah, man, it’s lit.” Nursey has four pages full of notes now, four pages that he can actually turn into something that’s not a pile of utter crap. “Is Bitty okay?”

“He was talking to Jack on the phone when I was fixing the door,” Dex says. “And there’s four pies in the kitchen.”

“‘Swawesome.”

Dex glares.

“Not ‘swawesome?”

“They’re _stress_ pies.”

“At least they’re not _Nursey broke another mug and I hate him_ pies.” There’s a broken mug fine now.

“Still, we should…” Dex trails off and ducks into the bottom bunk. “We should do something to help.” He leans against the wall and pulls Nursey’s feet into his lap.

“We’ll think of something,” Nursey says.

He knows that Dex is watching him, but he’s already scribbling again. Dex’s fingers are perfectly still, curled around Nursey’s ankles, and he’s also perfectly quiet, but he’s _right there_ , and his hands are warm and they’re distracting, and Nursey knows that Dex is waiting for him to finish.

He writes two more words that don’t even go with the beginning of the sentence, then, a split-second later, his notebook is on the floor and his eyes are on Dex.

Dex’s hair is sticking up at odd angles, like he’s been running his fingers through it, probably while he was fixing that door. His face is flushed, his eyes bright, and Nursey wants to ravish him, but when Dex crawls up to meet him in a kiss, it’s gentle and slow.

Nursey can do gentle and slow. He can lose himself in gentle and slow. Sometimes they’ll kiss for hours and they won’t even notice, touches light, kisses unhurried, headed for nothing in particular, except that feeling of being close to someone else, that warmth of being pressed close to one another. Nursey hopes that tonight will be a night like that. He needs a night like that.

When it gets dark, Nursey turns on his bedside lamp and they lie next to each other and he gives himself a minute to just _look_ , to take it all in. Dex, his lips red and bitten, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes dark, fixed on Nursey.

He almost says it then. Almost.

Dex’s fingers curl around Nursey’s. “It’s so weird that a year from now that’s going to be us,” he says. Because Dex can say those things as if they’re just like any other thought, as if it isn’t scary in the slightest.

Nursey doesn’t have to ask what he means. Next year they’ll be the ones who are playing their last game, they’ll be the ones who are moving out, they’ll be the ones who are leaving. “Yeah,” Nursey whispers.

“We’re not gonna live in the attic anymore.”

“I know.”

There’s an _and then what’s gonna happen_ hanging in the air, but maybe it’s too early to talk about that, or maybe it’s exactly the right time, but Nursey doesn’t even want to think about it right now, so he turns over and fishes his pen off the floor.

“Nursey, what–”

“Shush.”

“If you play connect the dots with my freckles again, I’m kicking you out of bed,” Dex says, but there’s no real heat behind it. Neither of them is going anywhere. They’ll stay right here, and they’ll fall asleep together, and they’ll wake up together, and Nursey clings to that certainty like a lifeline because there aren’t a great many other things that seem certain to him right now.

“Hold still,” Nursey says and slowly trails his fingers up and down the soft skin on the underside of Dex’s forearm.

Dex’s breath hitches when Nursey leaves a kiss in the wake of his fingertips. Then he starts to write. 

Nursey’s handwriting fluctuates somewhere between _completely unreadable_ to _pretty decent when he’s making an effort_. And he’s making an effort now. Dex has grown quiet again and just watches as Nursey writes letter after letter on his skin, traces each one once, twice, before moving on to the next one.

When Nursey is done, he looks up. Dex’s smile is softer than he’s ever seen it.

“I–” Dex starts, then he presses his lips together and plucks the pen from Nursey’s fingers.

He pulls at Nursey’s wrist and writes _I love you too_ on the back of his hand.

It’s wonky and smudged, and to Nursey it’s everything.

 

**(+1)**

Chowder’s door is wide open; Chowder himself isn’t anywhere to be found, though. His suitcase is in the middle of the room and Nursey once again has to shake off that queasy feeling that comes with the thought that they’re leaving for the summer for the last time in a couple of days.

“Chowder?” Nursey says, even though it’s obvious that Chowder isn’t around.

Nursey woke up from a nap five minutes ago and suddenly the entire Haus is empty. It’s like he’s slept through the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse, except he’s not in the middle of it. Everyone, including the zombies, is gone and he’s the last person on Earth.

Something rustles and a scrap of paper sails off Chowder’s desk. The window is wide open. Nursey frowns and walks over to close it. It takes him one look out the window to realize why it’s open.

“Looks like I’m not the last person on the planet after all,” Nursey says.

Dex, sitting cross-legged in the reading room, looks at Nursey over his shoulder, a small smile tugging at his lips. He’s wearing Nursey’s Samwell sweater, one of the older ones that’s a size too big, the white 28 starting to come off at the edges.

“Where’s Chowder?” Nursey asks.

“Left with Farms about ten minutes ago.” Dex grins at him. “Finally woke up, huh?”

“Hey, I need my beauty sleep.”

Dex scrunches up his nose and it nearly kills Nursey on the spot. _Adorable_ isn’t a word that Nursey would usually use to describe Dex, but right now it’s the most fitting one he can come up with. “Well, it sadly didn’t do much good,” Dex says.

“You’re so cute when you’re trying to be mean,” Nursey says, tries to lean against the frame of the window and misses it by half an inch. He only barely catches himself.

“You okay there?” Dex asks, amusement plain in his voice.

“I’m going back to bed,” Nursey mutters. He waggles his eyebrows at Dex. “You coming? And I mean that in every sense of the–”

“Fuck off, Nurse.” Dex bites his lip. “I’ll just stay out here for a little while longer, okay?”

“Okay,” Nursey says. It’s nice out, the breeze gentle, the sun already dipping low. “D’you wanna be alone?”

Dex shakes his head. “Just try not to die when you climb out the window.”

Nursey makes it through the window without any major injuries. He deserves a gold star for that. When he sits down next to Dex, he wraps an arm around him and Dex slumps against him with a sigh.

 _It gets harder every year_ , Nursey wants to say, and, _We’ll see each other soon, though_. He’s been repeating that last part over and over again in his head for at least three weeks.

Nursey is going to Maine this summer and he’s taking Dex to New York with him afterwards and he already knows that those two weeks will go by much too quickly, and he already knows that he’ll spend the rest of the summer wanting to go back already and time will _crawl_ by and it’s going to be _horrible._ Because if he could, he’d spend each and every day with Dex. Every day, just the two of them.

Sure, they’ll talk on the phone and on Skype and Nursey will buy the ugliest _Greetings from New York City_ postcards he can find and send them up to Maine, but it’s not the same thing. Nursey buries his face in Dex’s hair and tries not to think about how quickly their junior year went by. Senior year will probably be over in a matter of seconds.

Dex’s fingers slowly wander up and down Nursey’s thigh. There’s no one else around. No one in the Haus, no one in the street, just the fat squirrel that lives in the tree next to the house.

It’s a quiet little moment, and of course Nursey has to go and ruin it by talking, but he feels like he’ll explode if he doesn’t say it right this second. It’s not particularly romantic, or special in any way, it’s not some momentous occasion. He’s not even sure why it seems so simple to him all of a sudden.

Maybe because he feels like he’s said it a thousand times already, on post-it notes and with alphabet soup.

“Hey, Dex,” Nursey says. He kisses Dex’s temple. There it goes. “I love you.”

Dex turns his head and kisses the corner of Nursey’s mouth. “Hey, Nursey,” he whispers, like this is just for him, “I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to my pal @zimmbits who helped me out a lot with this fic.
> 
> Kudos and comments are very much appreciated :)
> 
> I'm at @zimmermaenner on tumblr if you wanna say hi!


End file.
